Wednesday, 29 July 2009

Ages of the Earth

They go, essentially, from old stone, to new stone, to metal. More specifically from Mesolithic and Neolithic to Chalcolithic, and thence to bronze, iron and finally, with glorious vagueness, to 'history'. What's missing from this picture?

Cloth, that's what. We still build our cities mostly out of stone (which is to say: in urban terms we still live in the neolithic); and our tools and machines either out of metal, or plastic (late iron age blurring into the petrochemical age). But we have been defining our immediate lives in terms of cloth since late mesolithic times. Human civilisation has happened under the umbrella of a Textile Age.